A few years ago, when the Brexit It was not even a remote possibility, I had the opportunity to accompany a Scottish friend to an interview that he had to hold in the House of Commons with the deputy of his electoral constituency, an interview that the House, both in this and in other cases It greatly facilitated with its open door policy throughout the year.
In the central hall, flanked by mosaics of the patron saints of England –Saint George–, Scotland –San Andrés–, Wales –Saint David– and Ireland –Saint Patrick–, I attended this interview, and personally saw how many others resemble It was being held in the same place, in a democratic demonstration of bringing the members of the Chamber closer to the citizens and making the members available to them.
In contrast to this, in our country there is no option whatsoever to access Congress, other than, of course, through guided tours during working hours, as long as parliamentary activity allows it; nor to meet personally with its members, in the image and likeness of the British Chamber.
The only exception to this rule, which is strictly maintained in legislature after legislature, with the excuse perhaps that current regulations, electoral or not, prevent acting in another way, is given by the so-called open day, which usually coincides with a new anniversary of the Constitution. In it, the president, with an artificial use of the faculties of her position, even dares to personally go through the main entrance to show a clearly imposed popular closeness and empathy.
So the open day is, yes, of open doors, but not so that the ordinary citizen can meet with their representatives and expose them, where appropriate, the legal, economic or social concerns derived from a disputed or debatable government or opposition, but simply to visit the headquarters of an institution that embodies , in an increasingly faded way, national sovereignty, and contemplate, amidst the morbid and consequent shame, the traces of the sad passage of Tejero by the Hemicycle.
This supposedly democratic condescension I do not know if it is, in the end, an acknowledgment or a humiliation, but when in doubt, given the choice between one and the other, I would rather lean towards the latter, at least to be able to continue to maintain the independent position with coherence that I have always kept.
This being striking, it is even more so what happened a few days ago in Congress on the occasion of the celebration of an information day on The six of Zaragoza, in support of some young people sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon to various prison terms for crimes of disorder, disobedience and injuries in the course of altercations on the Zaragoza campus.
Regardless of whether the sentence is in accordance with the law or not, and that, if not, it could be the subject of the corresponding appeal, what is inadmissible is that members of the socialist party, in the Government or in Parliament, use the headquarters of the latter, with the consent of the president’s action or omission, to revile judges, prosecutors and police, calling them criminals, in another demonstration of a new institutional degradation.
These two events that I have just commented, with closed doors in the first case and open doors in the second, both in Congress, as we have seen, are unfortunately not two isolated events. In reality, they are symptomatic of a state of affairs linked to a certain conception of politics, closer to the interests of the parties than to those of the citizens, which is prolonged in time, without anyone, despite the democratic devaluation that it entails, want to solve it.
This reminds me of what it said George Orwell in one of his articles, Notes on the go, about a kennel that once inflicted on a wasp: “I was sucking on jam on my plate, and I cut it in half. She didn’t find out; he just kept eating while a trickle of jam flowed from his severed esophagus. “
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